1/2 A Mainstream 

What we have been up to: 

 We are excited to be back this term! We have jumped straight into our next integrated topic for T2, “Bugs”! We have started brainstorming everything we know, think and wonder about our creepy crawly friends. We’ve explored our local neighbourhood and garden to see what kinds of bugs live in our community. I have sent home a “Backyard Safari Search” for students to complete with their families about the bugs in their garden OR the bugs in their local park. 

As our trip to the museum approaches (week 4 - please check compass!!), we have been thinking about appropriate, respectful and curious museum behaviour. We are practising walking slowly and quietly next to a partner and listening carefully to our teacher for instructions! We aren’t experts yet, but we are definitely getting better! 

Maths:

We have continued developing our understanding of place value this term. Students have been exploring one-, two- and three - digit numbers and learning skills such as:

-ordering numbers

-numbers that come before and after

- rounding to the nearest ten

- reading really big numbers

Did you know that shapes are EVERYWHERE? We’ve been on the hunt for shapes around our schoolyard and we’ve found so many. We have even started to organise our shapes and began noticing different properties of shapes and objects such as sides, vertices and faces. 

Literacy:

As part of our phonics program, classes have continued to learn Little Learners Love Literacy Stage 7.2 sounds. These sounds include: ar as in art, a as in past, al as in half, or as in short, aw as in law, ir as in dirty, ur as in turn, er as in perfect, air as in hair, are as in care, and ere as in there. Students have been introduced to morphology, understanding how ‘-ing’ changes the meaning of a “doing word” to a “doing right now” word! 

E.g: I run —> I am running.

Students started off the term by writing a recount about all the fun things they did on their holidays. Students unpacked their holiday and found interesting seeds to inspire their writing; they planned and then drafted, revised and edited their recounts.

What’s to come in the next two weeks:

• Week 4 is our museum excursion! We are so excited! Make sure you check Compass for event details. Thank you to all our parent volunteers, I am happy to say we have enough adult helpers now that we have reached our 1:5 ratio and some:) Yay us!
• In the coming two weeks in phonics, we will start to look at the sounds ir as in dirty, ur as in turn, and er as in perfect.
• The next text type we will look into will be information reports. Bugs is a perfect topic for information reports.
• Next week we start our maths unit on addition and subtraction and all the different mental strategies we can use to solve these problems. Plus, we will be continuing to develop a deeper understanding of the properties of 2D shapes and using flips and turns to show congruency between shapes.